Off With Her Head
by Shyaway
Summary: A collection of one-shots written for the LiveJournal community 6impearfics. Mostly Sweeney/Lovett. Updated: "It was easy to get to the heart of a dead man." Mrs Lovett has far more trouble with that of a living one.
1. Two Hearts

Disclaimer: Not mine. Used without permission or remuneration but with as much love and respect as Sweeney has for his friends; and given the nature of the prompts, I should probably state that I am not affiliated with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, either.

This is a series of one-shots written for the LiveJournal community 6impearfics, where the prompts are BPAL's descriptions of their perfumes. The first one is _Black Dahlia: Voluptuous magnolias strewn over orchid, star jasmine, black amber and smoky rose_, from the prompt set _Off With Her Head_.

Should you have read the other set, _Sex and Candy_ - yes, I am still working on it! This set is closer to completion, though.

* * *

She had done it again; dragged him downstairs from his spartan sanctuary to her overpoweringly feminine parlour where the swollen-rose wallpaper and the stench of perfume were starting to make him feel sick. The air upstairs might always hold a faint tang of copper and salt, but it was cleaner than the fug of baking and cheap perfume that pervaded down here, and so, so much purer than the stink outside. Ten more minutes, Sweeney thought as he sat suffering the close heat of the fire, and he would have stayed long enough for her not to make a fuss when he left.

Mrs Lovett, the very model of a good housewife, was sewing, making a shirt. Sweeney hoped it was for the boy and not for him. Every once in a while she looked up at him sidelong and smiled to herself, well pleased with her charade of domesticity. She thought he didn't notice, but he did. It was always as well to be aware of a fellow predator's movements, lest while you weren't looking they were on you, sinking their teeth into the back of your neck – as Mrs Lovett did all too often, trying to conceal her bite under soft, fleshy lips while her untamed hair cascaded over his shoulder, Rapunzel-like (and he was definitely not her prince), and her vulgar perfume invaded his senses.

Remembering the last time she had done that, Sweeney automatically felt for his holster, making sure of the razor's comforting presence.

A muffled exclamation told him that Mrs Lovett had pricked her finger. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her hold up her lace-gloved hand to inspect the wound. Her murmur of disappointment was nothing – she always chattered on, like the clatter of a wound-up clockwork doll or the creak of the gears in their own fiendish machine, it was how you knew they were working – but blood was beading from the doll's hand and he could smell it from here, cutting through her usual too-sweet scent, tantalising. An infinite improvement. The beginnings of the smell that savoured of a job well done. That tawdry little bead needed some help to blossom into beautiful rubies…

She noticed him staring. There must have been something in his look that, for once, unsettled her, for she blushed (a mistake, if what she wanted to was to divert his attention … all that blood rushing to her cheeks…) and covered the wound as if it were an impropriety.

Sweeney turned his face away and made his exit.

--

After that, her unbloodied smell affronted him even more.

He knew, because she was always pressing herself against him and her hands and lips and breasts were always in his face, exactly where she dabbed it – too much of it – and the cheap scent offended his nose. One would think that fifteen years of prison would have inured him to any foul odour, but no, that smell wafted up to him like a professional insult: so infuriating that the next time he was restocking his tonsorial supplies he bought a bottle of ladies' perfume – and God help him, chose something he thought she would like, voluptuous red rose and carnal jasmine. Not like Lucy's melancholy-sweet violets at all.

He knew he'd made a mistake as soon as he gave it to her.

"Oh, Mr _Todd_," she cooed, spraying herself with it indiscriminately and going into near-orgasmic raptures, "how kind you are!" so that he wanted to smash the glass bottle on the chopping board and rub her wrist in the fragments until she stopped twittering and the final note of the perfume was, satisfyingly, her blood. Do you see now how kind I am, Mrs Lovett?

Instead he stalked out of the room.

--

Now the place smelled of blood-red roses. Somehow that was even worse.


	2. Gallows Literature

Disclaimer: Not mine. Used without permission or remuneration but with as much love and respect as Sweeney has for his friends.

Prompt:Penny Dreadful, for 6impearfics. _Also called Gallows Literature. A dime novel rife with melodrama, horror, madness and cruelty; a ten cent analogy of vice and virtue in conflict. Soft perfume evocative of noir heroines over rich red grave loam__._

A/N: hereswith did her usual wonderful job beta-ing; any remaining errors are mine.

* * *

Mrs Lovett was just serving a nice meat pie – clerk, very fresh, butchered only yesterday – for the delectation of a gaggle of law students, when through the bustle outside cut what had become the most unwelcome sound: a police whistle blew.

The customers all craned to see (you'd think they were on the stage, the way they turned as one), eager for a good crisis, so none of them were looking at her when she jumped, the pie bouncing on the plate, and then froze. They were coming down Fleet Street. From the police station.

Cash in the tin on the mantelpiece. Mr Todd, was there time to get to him? Could she take Toby? No, she couldn't run, they were too close – all the months they'd been doing this and she still hadn't come up with a story for the police –

A blurred figure shot past, followed by three constables. They were chasing after an anonymous lad. It wasn't for her and Mr Todd.

Conversation started up again, the customers disappointed at the lack of a satisfying to-do. "You all right, Mrs Lovett?" one of the students asked. She was still foolishly holding the pie aloft – just think, she would have been caught red-handed, as it were.

"Perfectly, thank you. Jus' awful to think of what that boy must have done to 'ave the police after him at his age. People nowadays!"

They accepted it. No one really cared about anyone else (that was how you got away with murder). She set their food down, and with heart hammering, took refuge behind the counter, bending over the work surface and wiping it diligently to avoid any other questions.

She did always start when she saw the police now, and the uneasiness lingered like rotten meat in her stomach afterwards. Nerves of steel she might have when it came to those mangled bodies that landed in her bakehouse every day, but the law … mind you, she'd taken against them the day poor Mr Barker was arrested, and what the Judge did to his stupid wife hadn't helped, even if she had brought it on herself, silly little nit – it was only natural that they should be the enemy.

What would happen to the two of them if they were caught? Mr Todd would face the noose, she knew that and worried about it every day. As if he hadn't suffered enough! She wasn't sure that what she did was actually against the law; it wasn't as if she killed anyone herself, and people passed much worse things off for nefarious purposes – look at Toby's old master and his Elixir. _Her_ customers got exactly what they paid for: a nice meat pie. Still, like the loyal almost-wife she was, she would stand by Mr Todd to the last, with the noble cry of, "Whatever you do to him, you have to do to me!"

Wasn't it called being an accessory before the fact? So they would be doing it anyway. All right, death by hanging for both of them. She could see it now. The two of them side by side on the gallows. Her in her Sunday best. Would it be sunny, to give them a good send-off, or raining, to suit the sobriety of the occasion? Sunny – she'd look like a drowned rat in the rain. There would be a crowd, jostling and pressing to get a better look at the infamous barber and his faithful baker. Catcalling and angry? No, you'd be curious, wouldn't you, about a pair that had played such a jest on the world? The itinerant pie hawkers, all aspiring to own their own shops, _they_ would be swarming around her for tips.

It would be the first time she and Mr Todd had seen each other since the trial, she supposed, but there would be no chance of conversation, no heart-to-heart before they breathed their last – they could only speak with their eyes. She would take the secret of Lucy to her grave. Why burden him with such a thing?

The only opportunity to talk would be when she was offered a priest (ha ha), and she would have no confession for him, either. "It was _grand passion_," she would tell him. "God will understand." And then, in her supreme moment, _in extremis_, she would declare it for everyone.

"I did it all for love! If you wouldn't have done the same, it's only because you've never loved as I love him!"

Or because you hadn't the wit to think of it, Mrs Lovett thought, catching sight of Mrs Mooney trudging past, her dress threadbare now, the way Mrs Lovett's own used to be.

Back on the gallows... When she had spoken those words, proclaimed her love for the whole world to hear, Mr Todd would look at her and – well, she had to admit that even in her wildest dreams she couldn't imagine him saying, "I love you," in front of a crowd, nor of consenting to an eleventh-hour public kiss. But he would meet her eyes, and she would know how much he appreciated everything she had done for him, and that he did love her in return.

Then the signal would be given and they would both dangle. That was the trouble with this scenario; it had to end badly. Oh well. Not that it would ever come to that. A doomed kiss, a neat little incision, a graceful swoon in his arms, and Mr Todd could put them both beyond the reach of the law before you could say _knife_.


	3. The Maneater

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Used without permission or remuneration but with as much love and respect as Sweeney has for his friends.

**Prompt: **The Queen of Hearts. _Lily of the Valley, Calla Lily, stephanotis and a drop of cherry__._

This one is rated M for blood and sex. Thank you to hereswith for betaing!

* * *

It was easy to get to the heart of a dead man. Manipulating her cleaver and saws on Mr Todd's latest delivery to her, Mrs Lovett prided herself that she was just as much an artist with a knife as he was.

The hard part was removing their clothes. She had only ever done this for Albert (she'll overlook the little indiscretions in the years between his death and Mr Todd's return – a woman alone had to keep body and soul together somehow, and it wasn't as if she had gone on the streets like ever-chaste _Lucy_), and the first time she had had a corpse stretched out on her butcher's table, she had fumbled like a girl on her wedding night.

As she had gingerly opened the dead man's trousers, the thought of brides and grooms reminded her, like the diamond wink of an engagement ring, of why she was doing this. Closing her eyes, she told herself it was Mr Todd under her hands. She had the garments off in double-quick time.

He was down in the bakehouse with her tonight, doing some chopping and carrying the cut meat to the grinder for her while she performed the finicky filleting and boning. It was quite companionable, the two of them working together, even in silence. Mr Todd, as usual, met her attempts at conversation with grunts, or no reply at all, and in the end she had decided she had better concentrate on the task at hand. The rebuff didn't upset her unduly; he'd probably had a hard day, she told herself, and besides, though it might not smell that nice down here – she was grateful for the perfume he had given her, else she would stink like that herself – the enclosed darkness of the room and the warmth emanating from the oven conferred a strange intimacy on this nightly endeavour. Remembering that it was the two of them against the world, at work in the secret depths of the earth long after those that they preyed on – that would prey on them given half a chance – had lazily retired for the night, gave her a thrill of satisfaction and shared confidences. Did Mr Todd feel that too?

He was bound to, she thought, smiling at his averted face.

It wasn't easy to keep her mind from wandering, with him so close. With him working at the other end of the table, not looking at her, so she could observe unnoticed, watch the sure movements of his elegant hands, the way his dark hair fell over his forehead, how the firelight and the shadows played across his face – and when she took the corpses' privates off, well, it did make her wonder about him. Even more than she already did.

"Ow!"

She tutted, examining her scratched palm. There she went again, drifting off into daydreams when her own flesh was at stake. She wasn't serving up pies made from her _own_ meat.

Mr Todd finally glanced up at her exclamation (was it her imagination, or did he look at her with more interest when he realised what the matter was? He was funny about it when she hurt herself). He silently passed her the cloth he wore on his belt to bind the wound. She pressed it to the cut, with murmurs of "thanks," and "what a gentleman you are, Mr T." Such a gentleman that, when her fingers lingered on his, he jerked his hand away – to avoid compromising her, of course.

She had sliced open what palm-readers called the Mound of Venus. Perhaps, she thought, looking at the stain on the cloth, like virginal blood on snow-white bridal sheets, it was an omen.

--

Gloves were such a useful fashion. The customers did not notice her hand was injured when it was covered with spider-web mesh. They would not have wanted to see it, to be obliged to ask; they preferred to think of her as Mrs Lovett, the purveyor of fine meat pies, the automaton who dispensed them and smiled and smiled and was no villain. Especially the gentlemen, who would buy more pies precisely because it did make her smile.

If only it were that easy with Mr Todd. She was the merchant queen of Fleet Street, her domain the pie shop was filled with admiring courtiers, and yet the consort who had made all this possible would not even look her in the eye.

No matter. The dear Queen herself, they said, had had to propose to her Prince Albert, and she had got everything she wanted in that paragon of manly virtue. Mrs Lovett's own Albert had wooed her with a garnet ring (long ago sold) and a promise of a successful butcher's shop. See where _that_ courtship had got her. Yes, there was something to be said for the lady making her own choice.

"Mrs Lovett," one of the customers – a well-dressed man who could easily afford to buy two or three pies more and still have money left over to pay for a shave – said to her as she swept regally past, imagining that the ruby Mr Todd would surely give her on their engagement was already on her hand (how Mrs Mooney would spit!).

"Mrs Lovett," the customer said again, bringing her back to the present, "you're an excellent cook. That was quite delicious."

She beamed at him, as artificial as gaslight. "Why, thank you, sir. Can I tempt you to another?" This met with assent; he was looking her over in an intimate way that she did not like. She would certainly recommend a shave to the presumptuous man. "Veal or pork?"

"One of each – provided they are served by the same fair hand that made them."

He definitely needed shaving. "I like a man with an appetite," she said (meaning nothing of the kind – gluttony was such a waste. Mr Todd's abstemious habits might be a disappointment when it came to plying him with food, but at least it was thrifty), and bestowing a final smile upon the customer, turned away to fetch his last meal. She should have suggested he got shaved before eating any more, then they could have kept the pies for sale to someone else.

Out of habit, she glanced up at the barber shop as she crossed the courtyard. And saw Mr Todd on the balcony, surveying his potential victims and looking down at her the way the Nonconformists would at the Scarlet Whore of Babylon.

--

The man who had so offended her sense of propriety escaped with his throat intact; heat rising in her cheeks as Mr Todd's disgusted glare bore down on her, she had scurried inside, scooped up the pies, and slammed them on his plate without speaking another word to him. How _dare_ he make Mr Todd think ill of her? Then her rage flared at Mr Todd himself – how could he think ill of her under any circumstances? She only did it for him!

By that evening, her ruffled feelings had been smoothed by time and a healthy day's takings, and she could think about the incident with a clear head. Perhaps it was a good sign. He must feel something for her, mustn't he, to have reacted that way? If he cared at all what she did, that must mean he cared about her as well? And perhaps he would realise that now?

Thus reassuring herself, down in the bakehouse, slicing up _his_ takings for the day, she coyly asked him, "Are you jealous?"

She got a sneer and a black eye.

_Grand passion_, she told herself the next morning, powdering over the swelling as discreetly as she could. _Grand opera_. You couldn't _expect_ the course of true love to run smooth. Toby eyed her worriedly when she emerged, but thankfully said nothing. The poor child was too young to understand.

So began a very long day of explaining that she had walked into a door, and enduring the pity of the cynical and the spectacle-maker recommendations of the credulous.

Oh, Mr Todd, she sighed to herself, _if you only knew_ what I put up with for your sake.

--

Testing the pies, she supposed there was something promiscuous about having had so many men in her mouth.

That train of thought led her immediately back to Mr Todd. For several nights, he had refused to help her in the bakehouse, and had only returned tonight because she had point-blank insisted – she couldn't get through all the bodies without him, not with everything else she had to do (and it was all for him; laundry every day, so many bloody shirts…). Her bruise had faded now; she comforted herself that he must not like seeing the consequences of his temper on her face and that had to be why he had been avoiding her.

To let him know all was forgiven, she pressed herself close to him when she said good night, and kissed the hollow beneath his ear, between his jaw and his throat, breathing in his cologne, her breasts rubbing against his arm as she came down from her tiptoes.

He made no response then, but the next time that she made sure to bend over in front of him, opening the view down her dress perilously far, she was certain that – for the merest instant – he looked.

--

For the time being, she made her inroads towards his stony heart – still safely ensconced in his chest, where as yet no loving word or gesture of hers could reach it – careful ones. He didn't like it when she was direct – well, what prince would like to be reminded that he could be defeated by a woman, no matter how powerful a queen she was? So she reined in her instinct to throw her arms around him at every opportunity, kept her touches feather-light and subtle, and waited.

Then late one night in the bakehouse, she had just been contemplating her left hand shining ruby-red with blood and thinking how well an emerald would become it, particularly with her hair, when she unconsciously rubbed her weary neck and transferred the stain from her hands. With a sigh at her absent-mindedness, and thinking of all the water she would have to heat and carry for a proper bath, she was making to wipe it off, when she noticed that Mr Todd was looking, _staring_ in fact, at her. At her blood-bedaubed throat.

--

Later, washing the blood out of her hair and thinking ruefully, in the midst of her glow of triumph, that those stains down the back of her dress were never going to come out, Mrs Lovett reflected that she hadn't expected to have a woman on the butcher's table, still less that she herself would be the woman had on it. She wasn't sure she liked the way Mr Todd had pushed her down and pulled her legs apart with as much tenderness as if she were in truth the meat that that table usually saw, but never mind, a conquest was a conquest, no matter what its terms. They could negotiate better ones later. She had no real rivals now to wrest her overcome prince from her, she thought, brushing aside the suspicion that if she cut out Mr Todd's heart as she did with all them shavers, she would find _Lucy_ engraved upon it.


End file.
